The southern city of Ouargla is one of Algeria’s most challenging job markets for young graduates. With support from Anadarko Petroleum, World Learning has offered one-on-one career guidance, professional soft skills and civic engagement training, English for the Workplace courses, career fairs, and other employment services to students at the University of Ouargla since 2013.
These programs have had an important impact on local youth. In a 2016 survey of more than 200 career center alumni, 72% of young job seekers had found employment, while 90% reported that they had applied their new skills to launching their careers.
WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF OUARGLA, WORLD LEARNING IS WORKING ALONG THE FOLLOWING AXES:
- The upgrading of training methods and materials to enable the university career center to offer more robust training courses;
- English for the Workplace courses;
- Identifying students’ appropriate career paths based on individual skills, personality traits, and aspirations;
- Supplemental trainings in essential professional skills and civic engagement to prepare the young participants to be dynamic, motivated, and conscious recruits;
- Reinforced linkages between the technical schools and local businesses to ensure the relevance and sustainability of services offered to young job seekers.